BilBOlbul accompanies readers of comics and aficionados of illustration all year, until the spring.  Exhibitions, performances, conferences, special projects, publishing presentations fill the programming throughout the spring and summer; the festival is just the beginning.

What is a comic?  How do comics work?
This year BilBolBul will reflect on these questions and what it means to experiment with comics LANGUAGE.
This year we have invited Lorenzo Ghetti and Carlo Trimarchi (first in line with the web comic To Be Continued in the exploration of the medium on the infinite online page) to create five teasers in anticipation of BBB15.

The first one discusses the synthesis and of the incalculable elements of style used to create a character.

The second teaser plays with the idea of white spaces: a fragment of invisible time that every reader of comics knows to construct automatically moving from frame to frame.

The third one reflects on the use of balloons and how they can be transformed to recount the inner lives of characters.

The fourth looks at what happens when the comics change in dimensions, if we shrink or enlarge them.

The fifth and final teaser examines the use of time in comics and its relation to space.

You can find all of the teasers on our Facebook page, along with previews of guests and news about the next BilBOlbul on our Vimeo channel.

It’s not a mistake: BilBOlbul 2015 has already started. Even if the ninth edition climax will come in November (from the 19th to the 22nd), BilBOlbul is a year long festival. A series of events will take us through the good season to the autumn events.

From the 8th to the 12th of June, in Bologna’s Cineteca, the English illustrator Emily Hughes, helped by the children enrolled in the first week of the summer camp, will grow a forest of wondrous creatures and tangled vines, creating the characters that will become a small stop motion animation film.
Just like the children, Emily Hughes will become a member of a very special tribe, the “Tribù dei Testainsù”, a community where everyone shares the experience of playing with pictures, both still and moving, through experimentation of animation techniques, listening to stories, watching movies and exploring the world all around. The artist will mix her own wild characters and stories with the tricks of animation and will take the whole tribe into a magical world where everyone can explore their own different identity.
Thursday, June 11th, at 2:30 pm Emily Hughes will be the guest of a private conference for the students attending the School of Illustration of Bologna’s Fine Art’s Academy. She will share with them her journey as an artist, from her student years and inspirations to her work method and her experience in the English publishing world.

The previous events of Spring/Summer (organized thanks to the contribution of Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, Scuola di Lettere e Beni Culturali – Università di Bologna and Gruppo Hera) were:

April 22nd, H 17 pm
Accademia di Belle Arti – Aula Magna
Panel with Scott McCloud
With the participation of Daniele Barbieri
In collaboration with Bao Publishing and Pop Store

May 13th, H 10 am
Accademia di Belle Arti – Aula Magna
Panel with Nadia Budde
With the participation of Ilaria Tontardini
In collaboration with Goethe – Institut Italien

May 20th, H 17 pm
Accademia di Belle Arti – Aula Magna
Panel with Dylan Horrocks
With the participation of Michele Foschini and Vanna Vinci
In collaboration with Bao Publishing and Pop Store

May 22nd, H 17 pm
Accademia di Belle Arti – Aula Magna
Panel with Quint Buchholz
With the participation of Emilio Varrà
In collaboration with Beisler Editore, Goethe – Institut Italien

May 25th, H 19 pm
Modo Infoshop
Panel with Stefano Alghisi
With the participation of Pierfrancesco Pacoda
In collaboration with Modo Infoshop, Tra le nuvole and Maledizioni

Steven Guarnaccia is one of the most important contemporary illustrators. On the occasion of Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2015, Steven Guarnaccia is going to transform Hamelin headquarters in his home. A trip through family remembrances, guided by a collection of drawings and found objects reinterpreted and customized by the artist.

Childhood, roots, immigration, the relationship between father and son are the core themes of Fatherland, solo exhibition by Steven Guarnaccia. Shoes, cigar boxes, wooden shirts, gloves, duckpins, clubs, suitcases, and many other objects are marks of family remembrances, studded with emblematic words from the artist’s life.

A vital and dynamic game among images, texts and heartfelt thoughts that shapes a path through which visitors can lose themselves and constantly test their curiosity.


The exhibition is opening April the 1st 2015, at 7.30 pm, in the presence of the artist.


Related to the exhibition, Collezionare me stesso, panel with the artist taking place March the 31st 2015 at CUBO. 
The artist is also going to meet the public at Caffè degli Illustratori (Bologna Children’s Book Fair) April the 1st 2015, at 2.00 pm.

Curated by Hamelin Associazione Culturale.

In collaboration with Transbook Children’s Literature on the Move, CUBO Centro Unipol Bologna, Parsons The New School for Design, Comune di Bologna – Quartiere San Vitale, Corraini.



Opening time: monday-friday 10.00-13.00/15.00-18.30 | Closed Saturday and Sunday



Steven Guarnaccia lives and works in New York. His works and illustrations are published on several magazines and newspapers, as “The New York Times” and “Abitare”. He collaborates with MOMA (New York), and designed different models of Swatch watches, carpets, ties, jewels, and a line of murals for Disney Cruise. He published illustrated collections of palindromes, a part from illustrated books for children, pop-up books, and books about popolar culture and design. He teaches illustration at Parsons – New School for Design of New York.

Elephants with Nina Wehrle: both swiss, they met at the design and illustration school Hochschule Design & Kunst HSLU in Lucerna. Together they founded the studio It’s Raining Elephants in Berlin in 2008. The strange name was inspired by a violent and sudden storm generating noises that sounded like big bodies falling from the sky.
Evelyne Laube spoke about this experience and her work, constantly trying to push the limits of illustration further, on the occasion of Art City, during a Lectio Magistralis at Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, on January the 23rd.


Laube and Wehrle mix up design, creation and manufacture of artists’ books, installations and performances, ceramic and theatre, with an accurate and strict discipline in drawing. Their sign can be thorough and descriptive, but at the same time it can build abstract and essential forms, in a constant dialogue and game of quotes with history of art and pictures. 
During the days of January 24th and 25th 2015, Evelyne Laube held a 12-hours workshop dedicated to young artists, at Spazio Z 15.



Evelyne Laube was born in 1982 in Lengnau, Switzerland. After attending a school year at Fine Arts Academy in Zurigo, she graduated in Art and Design with a specialization in illustration at HSLU University in Lucerna.
She also studied for a year at Fine Arts academy AVU in Praga, and in 2009 she follows an apprenticeship at the Print Workshop of BBK Berlin. Since 2008 she is a freelance illustrator. She formed with Nina Wehrle the duo It’s Raining Elephants, that won several international awards, as the Grand Prix BIB at International Biennial of Illustrations of Bratislava in 2013, the prestigious International price of illustration at Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2012, or the CJ Picture Book Award of Corea in 2011. She lives and works between Berlin and Lengnau.



On the occasione of Art City 2015.
 Curated by Hamelin Associazione Culturale. 
In collaboration with Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna and Quartiere San Vitale.


The invitation of Evelyne Laube is part of the mobility steps set by TRANSBOOK. Children’s Literature on the move, a project part of Creative Europe 2014/2020, coordinated by Salon du livre et de la presse jeunesse (France), with the partnership of Europäische Kinder- und Jugendbuchmesse Saarbrücken (Germany),Tantàgora (Spain), Arts Basics for Children (Belgium), Nobrow Ltd (UK), Literárne informačné centrum (Slovakia), Hamelin Associazione Culturale (Italy).